Video Games at Comic Con – A Review

August 4, 2009

You will not often see me writing up reviews of video games for the simple fact that I am of that breed of casual gamers whose last video game related purchase was the second super smash brothers (brawl? royale? gangbang? mosh pit? the game cube one.) I generally just play video games when with other people in a social setting. So I leave such opinions to my far more qualified colleague.

But at Comic Con I was able to play video games that have not yet been released and as such I will offer up what thoughts I have based on the less than five minutes of game play I was afforded by the sweaty, throbbing mass of body parts that is San Diego once a year.

Dante’s Inferno

Okay, so this was the game that I had the most fun playing. I was a fan of the original Devil May Cry back in the day, and this game reminded me of DMC on acid. In the tiny part that I played, I used a giant scythe to cut down skeletons, then performed a combo on a dude riding a three-story minotaur so I could use the minotaur to rip the head off of the skeleton barge that I was using to fly through whatever God-forsaken part of hell that I was in (yeah, at no given point did I really understand why I was doing what I was doing, not that it mattered). The action was crisp and the attacks, thanks to the scythe, were new and interesting. It was easily accessible and, if I still bought video games, I would probably be waiting for this one to come out.

Dead Space: Extraction

I have never been a fan of rail shooters, whether it was Time Cops 2 at Chucky Cheese’s or this Wii bullshit they’re pulling out now. We have the technology, allow me to move on my own accord. The fact that there is a co-op for DS:E at least means that I could see myself having fun playing this with somebody else. But that’s the only context.

Uncharted 2: Amongst Thieves

Man, I don’t even know the last time I tried shooting something with a playstation controller that didn’t involve materia and at least one talking animal. While it had smooth gameplay when watching other people play, I was sort of spastic with the whole thing. Still, there seemed to be smooth transition from shooting to hand-to-hand combat when in close with the enemies, including from-behind spine breaks, always a crowd pleaser. Got to play this alongside a guy dressed like Francis from Left 4 Dead who couldn’t figure out until the round was over that he was on the same side as the other players and supposed to be shooting the NPCs.

Left 4 Dead: 2

Really, what else do you need to know about this besides the title? The only new hand weapon I got to play with was what looked like a cricket paddle (?) in a Louisiana swamp, and it had the same sort of awkwardness as when you’re carrying around fire-extinguisher or gas cannister in preperation for when you might need it. But the new guns were fun, and it was nice to have a completely fresh map where you have no clue where you need to go or what the fuck might jump at you when. And we were either playing very easy or else both the tank and the witch have been made much easier to kill.

And that is a summation of my VG experience. There will probably a recap of the webcomics people I hit up soon, and another two-man wolfpack review in honor of Mystery Team, which we also got to see at Comic-Con (Spoiler: It’s goddamn hilarious).